


How to Break a Deal With the Devil

by ohmyfae



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Folktale AU, M/M, Trickster god Ardyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 02:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11842278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: A fill for the kinkmeme:Prompto Argentum was cursed at birth by a bored trickster god, giving him inhuman, glowing red eyes. His curse earned him censure and ostracism from the town in which he grew up, but he stubbornly refused the god every time he appeared to offer Prompto a wager as a way out.Then Prompto met Ignis Scientia, a blind traveler from Insomnia with secrets of his own, and with their burgeoning friendship, Prompto found that he suddenly had much more to lose...





	1. Chapter 1

On the day the wizard came to town, Prompto Argentum woke before dawn.

A pale, reddish glow shifted on the wall beside his bed as he sat up. It illuminated Prompto’s bony knees, the threadbare blanket that had been shoved into the corner of the bed during the night, and a pile of clothes that needed washing. It disappeared when he blinked, in a flash of darkness that Prompto would never see. 

“Good morning, Prompto,” he said. 

He went out to the pump and filled the buckets he needed for the morning. Then he risked the outhouse, washed up outside on the stone square his dad had set aside for the purpose, and checked the coop he’d built two summers ago. The chickens there clucked at him in disapproval when he rooted around under them, but he got three eggs out of the bargain, so that worked out fine. When he went back inside, he conscientiously scraped off the mud from his shoes. 

A large mirror hung on the wall of the living room, an heirloom that his parents hadn’t bothered to take with them. The cloth that normally covered it had slipped off, and Prompto’s pale, freckled face stared back at him. His eyes were red as flame, lit with an inner fire that gave off no heat and, as far as Prompto was aware, did him no favors. 

“Oh, look,” Prompto said, in a dull voice. “It’s the daemon.”

It had always been like this. Prompto had heard his mother crying about it, before she was gone, saying that she had to cover his face with a hand while he nursed, and couldn’t bear to look at him for the first few months. Even then, Prompto was used to his parents’ gazes skittering off to the side of him every time they spoke. Then they stopped speaking to him altogether, and after a while, when Prompto was old enough to look after himself, they went off to work one day and never came home. 

Prompto put two eggs in a tray under his icebox—which needed more ice, _damn,_ —and set the other one aside. He had enough bread left for toast before it went bad, so he got to work, whistling tunelessly, sweating as the fire in the stove finally kicked in. 

Outside, a bluejay flitted from a holly branch to the fence next door.

“Beautiful day,” Prompto said.

“Isn’t it just?” 

Prompto almost dropped his frying pan. 

“Oh,” he said, turning to the living room. “It’s you.”

The god sitting at Prompto’s dining table with one hand under his chin was an unfortunate fixture in Prompto’s life. He had dark mauve hair that curled to his shoulders, eternal stubble on his chiseled jaw, and so many ruffles and lace accents to his outfit that he looked like he was about to drown in a mile of cloth. Sometimes, he liked to be called Ardyn, because he’d killed a man called Ardyn three centuries before. Other times, he wanted to be called Your Radiance, or Humble One, or Master. 

He tipped a silk hat towards him in greeting, and Prompto cracked an egg over the frying pan.

“Prompto,” the god said. “Darling Prompto. My dear, _boring_ , predictable Prompto. _When_ are you going to do something about that curse of yours?”

“You mean the one you gave me?” Prompto asked. “And uh, never, because I _can’t_ do anything about it.” He scraped at the egg furiously with a bent spatula. 

Ardyn raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “But my boy, you can. Didn’t I tell you? You just have to find the apple of paradise—“

“Which doesn’t exist.”

“And give it to the twin snakes of Death and Cunning—“

“Which were killed two hundred years ago,” Prompto said. “It’s impossible.”

The god groaned. “Yes, but that’s the _point,_ my dear.” He spread his hands out over the table. “The futility of a hopeless struggle! Mankind’s dogged belief that perseverance and moral fortitude can overcome all obstacles! The delight in their eventual downfall! Come, now, Prompto, think about it from _my_ perspective.”

Prompto didn’t bother responding. He just upended his egg onto the plate, next to his toast, and made his way to the dining table. He gave Ardyn half the toast, because it wouldn’t help to piss off a god who already proved he could make Prompto’s life miserable, and ignored the face he made at the taste.

“You don’t have any cream?” Ardyn asked. “You know how I like cream and sugar with my bread.”

“The dairy farmer says I’ll curdle it,” Prompto said, giving Ardyn a meaningful look. The god sighed. 

“I can always bewitch the farmer,” he mused. Prompto rolled his eyes, casting a faint red light over his brows, and went back to eating. Eventually, Ardyn always got bored. He checked in on Prompto every half a year like clockwork, hoping that one day, Prompto would be desperate enough to try whatever task the god had to offer. So far, Prompto had managed to hold out. 

There were some days that he would have done it, though. Days when even walking through town with his eyes covered in a blindfold did nothing to stop people from dousing him with water from their upstairs lofts, from making signs against evil when he tried to smile at them, from encouraging their dogs to bite and bark and chase. The last bit always hurt more than anything else. Prompto _liked_ animals. They didn’t mind his eyes, not unless their owners had trained them to. 

The first year that Prompto found himself alone in what had been his parents’ small cottage, he asked Ardyn _why_ he’d cursed him. Maybe Prompto’s father had stolen something from the god, or his mother had denied his affections. Maybe his parents were gods themselves, and they hadn’t abandoned him after all, just run off on a godly mission to save their son.

“I was bored,” Ardyn said. “And you were there.” And Prompto, ten years old in his empty house, knew that his parents were never coming home.

No one would ever dare to come close enough to get to know him. No one would love him, or talk to him, or hold his hand the way Prompto saw people do in the park before they spotted him and scattered. And all of this wasn’t because Prompto deserved it: He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

“Don’t actually bewitch the dairy farmer,” he said at last, but Ardyn was gone, leaving nothing behind but a smattering of crumbs. “You’re welcome.”

He cleaned off the table, washed his dish, and headed for the door. At the last minute, he grabbed the sheer black blindfold from the hook by the door. It didn’t do much to obscure the glow of his eyes, but things tended to go better for him that way. He fitted it on as he walked out. The door swung shut of its own accord, knocking him into the path, and he heard chuckling from somewhere near the roof. 

“Yeah, good for you,” he muttered, picking himself back up. “Kick a man when he’s down.”

It turned out that this day, like too many days in Prompto’s life, was a bad one. He dodged a bucket of dirt on the way by the nice little garden where one of his neighbors lived, was nearly run over by a man dragging a cart on his bicycle, and was hissed at by no less than three people before he got to the chocobo stables where he worked. Where he was told, by the foreman who had to look to the side when he spoke to him, that he was going to muck out the pens today. Again. Because gods forbid he give one of the chocobos the evil eye. 

Prompto grabbed his shovel and pulled off the blindfold as he went into the pens. Clearly, he shouldn’t have bothered.

Still, even working the _worst_ shift at the chocobo stables was better than nothing. Prompto got to sneak around back during lunch to pet his favorite, a black chocobo named Ulfric, and there was no way a bad mood could last when a gaggle of chubby little chocobo chicks got loose and started bobbing around in the street. Not only that, but the stables had indoor plumbing, which meant Prompto could actually sneak a real shower after his shift was done. 

Someone immediately threw a handful of rice at his face when he left, but that wasn’t so bad. He wondered who had told people that rice would repel a daemon. Apparently, he was supposed to be stuck to the spot, unable to move unless he counted every grain. When he just walked on, the woman who threw the rice shrieked and backed away. 

“Great weather we’re having!” Prompto shouted at her retreating back. 

He was skirting around the main plaza when he saw a crowd huddled in the corner, near the statue of the first mayor. Prompto avoided crowds—they had a bad habit of becoming mobs if the right mood took them, and there was nothing like a guy showing up with eyes like fire to help them along. 

A kid pushed past him, running towards the crowd. “Come on,” he shouted, and Prompto stepped aside to let a group of children pass. “We’re gonna miss the wizard!”

“He ain’t a real wizard, goose,” another one said. “It’s all tricks. My mama said.”

“I don’t care,” said another. “I heard he can made metal float! And set fire to flour!”

“Everyone knows flour explodes, stupid!”

Prompto stopped. A wizard, huh? It’d been a while since anyone resembling an entertainer had come to town. Prompto struggled between common sense and selfishness, and for once, selfishness won out. He put his blindfold back on and tiptoed towards a tree at the edge of the crowd. If he was lucky, no one would notice him, and Prompto might see something that made the risk worthwhile.

The man who stood in the center of the crowd wore a suit that must have been expensive, once. It was well-tailored, cut to accentuate the man’s perfect posture and trim waist, dyed in dark, muted purples and grays. The top button of his collar was undone, the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and it looked like the man had been traveling for some time by the discoloration at his shoes. He had light brown hair pulled back in a loose pompadour, and his eyes, mapped with burn scars, were hidden behind dark glasses.

There was a small, empty glass tank in front of him, and two children next to it nervously held thin boats made out of metal foil.

“It’s alright,” he said. “Put them on the top of the tank. Gently, please.”

One of them set her boat over the tank and let go. The boat bobbed at the top, directly over the empty air. The crowd murmured and gasped, and the second kid set his next to hers before scrambling to the edge of the crowd. 

“It’s a trick,” said an older child. The man smiled. 

“Not quite,” he said. He had a low, rich voice, with the drawl of a northern accent. Prompto edged closer. “It isn’t magic, either. What most people assume is magic is simply science under a different name. What you see—or rather don’t see—here, is sulfur hexafluoride, a gas six times heavier than air. Now, I have filled this beaker with the gas, as you can tell—“ he held up an empty glass vial, and the crowd laughed gamely. “And I will now sink these ships.” 

He touched the edges of the little boats to check their location, then dumped the empty air onto them. Both boats drifted down. 

“And there we have it,” he said. “Magic is just a trick, as you would call it, and every trick has an explanation.”

“Maybe you can explain the daemon, then,” said a man in the crowd. Prompto tried to shrink behind the tree. The man tilted his head, the same small smile on his lips. 

“Pardon?”

“The daemon,” the local man said again. “It’s been haunting our town for a good twenty years now.”

“About time someone did away with it,” said someone else. “But it’d be a shame, burning down the old Argentum house.”

Prompto froze. He thought of his bedroom up in flames. The paintings his parents hadn’t taken with them smoking as oil caught fire, the glass windows—a vanity, a sign of his father’s wealth as a doctor—cracking with heat. Ardyn, standing in the middle of it all with his hands out, offering him the only impossible option left to take. 

“Perhaps I can investigate,” the entertainer said. “As a representative of his majesty’s university in Insomnia, it would be my duty to seek out all signs of daemonic activity.” The crowd whispered and jostled each other. Visitors from Insomnia were rare: The wall that guarded the capital city of Lucis was heavily guarded, and it was said that passing through it was like stepping into another world. 

Prompto had dreamed of running to Insomnia, once.

He slipped away before the conversation could turn to other things, like where Prompto lived or exactly _how_ flammable his house was. He wondered if Ardyn was walking among the crowd, whispering in their ears, but he wasn’t _evil._ Just fickle. Callous. Unfeeling. 

He’d just made it to the gate when he heard a clicking sound down the road. A bright yellow chocobo was plodding along the hard-packed dirt, a bag strapped to its saddle and a cart trundling behind it. At the bird’s side was the entertainer from that afternoon, holding a long cane with a strange hook on the end, which brushed aside the overgrown thistles that lined the street. The man was frowning deeply, and would stop every now and then to trace his fingers over a fence or gatepost. 

“Hey,” Prompto said, and the man’s head jerked up. “Are you lost?”

“Somewhat,” the man said. “None of your houses have numbers on the gates, did you know? I’m looking for the Argentum residence.”

“Oh.” Prompto blushed. “Oh, that’s. That’s me.”

“You are a residence?” The man’s frown twitched. “How inconvenient for you.”

“What? No, I mean I live there. It’s right here.”

The man placed a hand on his chocobo’s neck, and the bird came to a shuffling stop. “You wouldn’t happen to be a daemon, would you?” he asked, with the faintest smile.

Prompto took a short breath. “No.”

“As I expected.” The man tucked his cane under an arm and bowed. “I am Ignis Scientia. Master of History and Physics of His Majesty’s University.”

Prompto bowed back, nervously, before he realized that Ignis probably wouldn’t know. “Uh. I’m Prompto. Prompto Argentum. I, uh, I work at the chocobo post.”

“Do you?” Ignis actually seemed _interested,_ which was ridiculous. Usually, it took twenty years to become a Master of anything. One of the old Masters had come in through town when Prompto was little, talking about frogs and salamanders and towing around an apprentice who took one look at Prompto and seemed to want to take him apart and see how he worked. Ignis looked no older than maybe twenty-five. People like that didn’t go around talking to cursed commoners who smelled like chocobo.

Then again, they didn’t hold demonstrations in town squares, either.

“I know it’s a dreadful imposition,” Ignis said, in that same formal tone as before, “but it seems none of the inns in town will accept a chocobo, and the fee at the post is a little high. If I could let my Champion loose in your yard while the two of us have a little chat?”

Prompto felt as though he’d just been dumped into the middle of the ocean without a map.

“Sure,” he said, weakly. 

And so that’s how he ended up with a Master from the best university in Lucis sitting on his ancient couch, sipping tea that was probably too strong while Prompto tried to wrangle a dinner for them out of what he had in his cupboards. Outside, Champion the chocobo had shoved his head in the window of the chicken coop and was chirping softly to the bemused chickens, which were burbling back. 

“So you don’t believe in magic, huh?” Prompto asked, shoving a tray of glazed vegetables in the oven. “I guess you wouldn’t, being from Insomnia and all.”

“Oh no,” Ignis said. “I’m certain that there are phenomena that are out of mankind’s current realm of knowledge. Whether I’d call it _magic_ is another matter entirely.”

“What about daemons?” Prompto asked. His pulse thudded in his throat as he sat down on the other side of the couch. “Gods?”

Ignis shrugged. “There might be powerful creatures in the world that desire to be worshipped, but you won’t find me putting my _faith_ in them. Daemons? Well. Superstitious nonsense, most of the time. Like you. You know,” Ignis said, leaning in to Prompto as though sharing a private joke, “they said your eyes were made of _fire._ ”

“They did, huh,” Prompto said. His stomach sank to the basement.

“If that were true, you’d be dead by now,” Ignis said. “I don’t smell burning flesh, do you?”

Prompto opened his mouth to contradict him, to say that yes, actually, his eyes _were_ about as fiery as you got without throwing off any actual heat, but Ignis was smiling at him, with a few strands of hair dangling over his forehead from his slicked-back style, and it had been so long since anyone had looked at him that way that Prompto shut his mouth and shrugged. 

“Not yet,” he said.

Ignis actually _laughed._

“You… you know,” he said, after a minute. “Before my parents, um, before I started living here on my own, we had some wine from one of my dad’s patients. He was a doctor, so they were always giving him stuff instead of paying.” And they felt sorry for him, but Prompto didn’t mention _that._

“And he didn’t explain that whatever discoloration in your eyes may exist is a perfectly natural occurrence?” Ignis asked. Prompto stared at him. They were sitting closer, now, and the light that shone from Prompto’s eyes made the scars on Ignis’ face glow pink.

“I’m kind of special,” he said. 

Ignis leaned back against the couch. “I have a feeling that you are,” he said. 

They did end up breaking open the wine. Two glasses in, Ignis started telling Prompto about his life in the university. He painted a picture so vivid that Prompto almost felt like he was there: Late nights curled up in the archives of the library, visits to glassblowers and alchemists, shadowing doctors and scientists in the afternoons. Ignis had been strangely young when he started his studies, and his stories kept stopping at odd points and stumbling over details. 

“Then I’d go straight from school to work with his h—“ he’d say, and then silenced for a spell before carrying on. Or he’d reference someone and stop halfway, or hum quietly to himself, unable to get around whatever person or experience he’d rather not dwell on. Prompto was an expert at not dwelling, after twenty years of rolling his eyes at Ardyn, and lunged for the only topic he could think of that wasn’t himself.

“Did you know,” he said, “that the town kind of has a patron god?”

“Oh, dear,” Ignis said. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“He’s kind of a trickster,” Prompto said. “We’re not supposed to call him by name, and not many people know about him, but they say he was made when someone buried a man at the crossroads in the middle of town. He climbed out of the ground, right, put on a disguise, and went up to the man who killed him and said that if he could beat him at cards, he would wake up in the morning wealthier than the king.”

“And he lost, I assume,” Ignis said, refilling his glass a little shakily.

“No, he won,” said Prompto, who knew this story from a first-hand witness. “And the next morning, his wife woke up to find him missing. They found him a few hundred years later, in a sort of… barrow, I guess. Or tomb. He was covered in so much gold that it took two weeks to dig him out.”

“That’s a very literal god,” Ignis said. He pulled out a pocket watch on a fine silver chain, and ran a thumb over the surface. “Goodness, it’s late. I should make the rounds at the inns again.”

Prompto’s breath caught. “Or. Or you can stay here,” he said. 

“I couldn’t impose,” Ignis said. “I’ll be in town for a week.”

 _Really?_ Prompto wanted to say. He swallowed down the hopeful whine that threatened to escape his throat, and licked his lips. “It’s no problem,” he said. “I mean, Champion’s already made friends with my birds. What’ll happen if we take him away? He’ll pine. I can’t do that to a chocobo, man.”

“Well,” Ignis said, carefully setting his drink down. His cheeks were flushed pink, probably with the wine, but when he placed a hand on Prompto’s knee, it was warm and comforting and achingly _real_ like nothing else he’d ever known. “I can hardly say no to _that,_ can I?”


	2. Chapter 2

The last time Prompto woke to the smell of breakfast being made, he was eleven. He’d padded out into the kitchen to find Ardyn standing over the stove, laying out plate after plate of enormous, sizzling strips of bacon and thick slices of cinnamon bread out of a pan that never seemed to go empty, and lined them up one after the other on top of the kitchen counter. He smiled and winked when Prompto stood on tiptoe to examine them, and pushed a plate forward.

“I have a wager for you, my boy,” Ardyn said. “If you can eat all of this before the hour is up, I will give you back your old eyes. If you can’t, you will be _my_ boy, working as my eyes beyond the borders of this town as long as I have need of you.”

Prompto had looked at the heaped plates, up at the clock that hung over the door by the useless iron bar he’d stuck up there weeks ago, and turned to see to the chickens. When he came back, the fire was banked, the plates were gone, and all that remained of Ardyn was a trail of muddy footprints leading out to the middle of the living room floor.

Nine years later, Prompto fell over the camp bed he’d set up in his parents’ old room and scrambled for his clothes. He’d turned his parents’ bedroom into a sort of studio years ago, when, in a fit of charity, a priestess of Eos passing through town had given him a set of charcoal pencils and a stack of paper. The room was a tidy mess: broken cups had been reallocated as pencil and paint holders, the empty walls pinned up with drawings that started as childish scrawls and ended at realistic landscapes that Prompto was still unsure about. What he really wanted—what he was unlikely to get on a chocobo post worker’s salary—was one of those new cameras from the city, the kind you didn’t have to stand in front of for hours just to get the picture right.

He could have used one when he made it to the kitchen, that was for sure. Ignis was wearing a dove-grey shirt with short sleeves that hugged the muscles of his arms and showed off the healthy glow of his skin. His hair was undone and hanging in a mess over his eyes, and with his glasses set on the counter, Prompto could see that the star-shaped scar over his left eye had sealed his lids shut.

“I apologize if I woke you,” Ignis said. “I bought some supplies yesterday afternoon, so I thought I might treat you to breakfast.”

“Oh,” Prompto said. Just that. _Oh._ He had so much to say, so many words spilling over the edge of the wall built by hands that never dared to touch him, that his mind couldn’t latch on to anything else. “I have to. Talk to the chickens.”

“Really,” Ignis said. The corner of his lips tilted just a fraction.

“Yeah. Yeah, I mean. Sure. Okay.” Prompto fled before he could dig himself a hole deep enough to drown in, and ran out into the small lawn of his home. Champion the chocobo was trying to swallow some greens whole, and gave him a bored look when he dug his hands in his soft ruff.

“Your owner’s gonna think I’m the biggest nerd in Lucis, buddy,” Prompto whispered.

When Prompto calmed down enough to think coherently again, Ignis had managed to work actual magic—or science, Prompto thought with a grin—on a couple of tomatoes, eggs, and a handful of herbs. Prompto inhaled it all before Ignis was even halfway done, but Ignis didn’t seem to mind.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever been so thoroughly complimented on a basic breakfast before,” he said. “My ego may never recover.”

“You keep cooking like this, and I might ask you to stay forever.”

Ignis was quiet for a moment, his milky right eye opening in the dim light of Prompto’s living room. “ _You_ haven’t considered leaving, have you?” he asked. “There are other towns that would be more forgiving of your condition, I’m sure. Or you can go to Insomnia—“

“Where the mobs are _bigger?_ ” Prompto said. “No thanks, I like my head the way it is. You know, attached to my body. Anyways, I like this town.”

Again, there was a moment of flabbergasted silence. “ _Why?_ ”

So Prompto told him. He told him about the chocobo races they held through the streets of town every fall, the apple orchards that opened up for everyone after the owner was done picking her share, of the woman at the bi-annual art festival who let him buy supplies so long as he went through the back of the tent. He talked about the plays the kids set up in the park, the sunflowers he planted in the summer that he heard the mayor say would have won him a plaque for his garden if he were eligible. He told him about the springs that bubbled up behind the walking paths no one used anymore, and the small waterfall that fed into a clear, freezing pool.

And the whole time he talked, Ignis would nod or hum or ask little questions that sent Prompto on wild tangents. He even laughed once or twice, and when Prompto got to the part about the waterfall, stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Prompto,” he said, and Prompto bit down on his tongue. Had he gone too far? How long had he been talking? “I was thinking seriously about cutting my time here short, and now I find myself wanting to take a walking tour. You should come to Insomnia. You could talk the Council into handing in their robes of office.”

Prompto blushed. “I… I wouldn’t…”

“You’d be a breath of fresh air, I assure you.” Ignis removed his hand, and Prompto swayed, leaning into the touch.

“Do you… want a walking tour?” Prompto asked, and immediately regretted it. “You don’t have to. You have those demonstrations and everything, but it’s my day off and the waterfall’s pretty close…”

Ignis gave him another one of his small smiles. “I haven’t had the occasion to swim in ages,” he said. “It would be a pleasure.”

They had to take the main street to get to the path that led to the river, and Ignis protested when Prompto said they should walk at least a few feet apart.

“I hardly think you’re contagious,” he said, stopping before a small café, when Prompto asked him for the fifth time to _Please,_ please walk closer to the middle of the street. “Do they honestly believe my eyes can contract the same—“

Prompto heard the water coming before it struck, and had just enough time to jump out of the way as a basin was dumped right where he was standing a moment before. Some of it sloshed on Ignis’ trousers, and he opened his mouth in wordless outrage.

“It’s fine,” Prompto said. “It’s fine. They think it’ll like, ward me off or something.”

“It’s appalling,” Ignis said. “Of all the small-minded, backwards—“

Prompto touched his arm. “That’s Mrs. Salin,” he said, speaking in a rush. “When I was fourteen, her daughter Penelope danced with me at a festival on a dare. She was nice about it, though. But she was already sick before that, and she got worse, and since my parents left we haven’t really had a doctor around. Everyone thinks Pen was cursed, so she was buried in the unconsecrated part of the graveyard. Even Mrs. Salin doesn’t go there. I’m the only one who, you know, makes sure it’s clean and everything.”

Ignis ground his teeth. “Why would you?”

“Someone has to,” Prompto said. “And she’s the only one who ever danced with me.”

Ignis turned aside.

“I’m not saying she should pull this kind of thing,” Prompto said, trying to speak in a lighter voice. “I just mean I can’t really be mad about it, you know?” Ignis said nothing, and Prompto slapped him on the back. “Come on, we’re almost at the crossroads. You’re gonna love it, there are all these wildflowers that turn different colors depending on the… oh, right, well, they smell nice.”

“An admirable save,” Ignis said, but he was still frowning, even when they turned the corner towards the river.

As they walked down the rough path, Ignis’ cane tapping over holes and bumps and pushing aside bits of bracken, Prompto glanced back at the main street they’d left behind. A man stood at the crossroads, jacket blowing in a breeze that wasn’t there, his dark mauve hair crossing over pallid cheeks and the knife’s edge of a smile.

The god called Ardyn tipped his hat to Prompto, and in a ripple of air like the haze of heat in high summer, he was gone.

 

\---

 

Ardyn liked to say that the truth had a way of creeping up on a person when their back was turned. Admittedly, he’d been saying this while sitting on Prompto’s roof, telling him a story about the time he turned himself into a lump of gold, then silver, then copper, listening to the poor woman who dragged him along try to justify each change, but Prompto had found that it was nonetheless true. No matter how you tried to keep a secret, it seeped up through the cracks like water through a sponge, slow and inevitable.

It started when Ignis, in a moment of disorientation in the deep water of the pool, reached out over the surface. Prompto met him halfway, their fingers lacing together, and a seed of something he had no name for took root in his chest.

_I want this,_ he thought. He wasn’t sure what it was. The slippery warmth of Ignis’ hand, maybe, the way the muscles in his back shifted as he swam, the sound of his name on his tongue. _Prompto._ A change in the silence that was Prompto’s old companion as they lay out on the flat stones at the edge of the pool, eyes closed to the sun.

He spent the afternoon while Ignis was out dragging the old comforters from the linen closet and leaving them on the line to air out. He emptied one of the chipped cups in his studio and filled it with water and fragrant blooms from his fence, and tried not to think of the way Ardyn had smiled at him from the road.

Ignis’ own truths started to slip out, as well. They came over dinner, when he commented on how some people could learn Prompto’s love for vegetables, or at night, when the temperature dropped and Prompto caught him shivering, unused to a place without heat. That second night, Prompto tucked the comforter around Ignis when the man was finally asleep in Prompto’s bed, and tried not to stare as he sighed and sank into the heat of the sun that still lingered in its folds.

When Prompto turned to go, Ignis’ hand snaked out to grab him by the wrist. He missed and caught his fingers instead.

“You’re too kind,” Ignis slurred, in a sleep-heavy burr.

“I’ll try to work on that,” Prompto said.

“No,” Ignis said. “It takes a great strength to be kind. Not all of us…” His hand slipped, and Prompto tucked it back under the covers. “Have that.”

“Aw, buddy,” Prompto said, grinning at Ignis’ stalwart struggle to stay awake. “That’s gotta be the nicest thing anyone’s said about me.”

“Shouldn’t be,” Ignis whispered, and Prompto went to bed thoughtful, rubbing the fingers Ignis had held, wondering what strength Ignis could find that Prompto had never been able to see.

The next evening, Prompto took a risk and asked Ignis to model for him.

“Just for your profile,” Prompto said, glad Ignis couldn’t tell how deeply he was blushing, though by the tilt of his lips, he had a feeling he suspected. “Honestly, man, someone should paint a portrait of you.”

“Unfortunately, they have,” Ignis said, as Prompto laid out his pencils. He sat carefully still, as though his whole body were locked in place, and Prompto didn’t have to rush to get his shape down like he did when he was out in the open, scratching away at a paper while watching people go by in the distance.

“I thought only rich people got portraits done,” Prompto said, and Ignis winced, just a little. “Or… or maybe it’s a university thing.”

“Something like,” said Ignis. “You may not recognize me, though.” He tapped his ruined left eye. “I wasn’t as beautiful then as I am now.”

“You are, though,” Prompto said without thinking, as he locked down the contours of Ignis’ cheek. Ignis went from the easy patience of waiting for Prompto to finish, to the frozen stiffness of a marble statue. “Oh, shit. You don’t have to—we can pretend I didn’t say that.”

“No, no, you’re quite alright,” Ignis said. “You meant it.”

“I guess I did.” Prompto put his drawing aside. “I got the basics. You can move now.”

He wasn’t expecting Ignis to move so _fast._ Ignis had a hand on Prompto’s knee, another on his shoulder, leaning over him to block out the steady glow of the living room lamp.

“You should come with me when I go,” he said. “I’m almost done with my… sabbatical. I’ll be returning to Insomnia soon. You can go to art classes at the university, work with the photographers there.”

“I can’t,” Prompto said, around the tight pressure in his chest.

“This town doesn’t deserve you,” Ignis said. He squeezed Prompto’s shoulder. “Come with me.”

Prompto wanted to, more than anything he’d wanted in his life. More than he wanted his parents to come home. More than he wanted a proper job grooming the birds at the post. More than he wanted to walk down the street and have people smile and wave rather than push children out of his way. But he knew what would happen. Ignis would come into a new town with a cart full of science experiments that looked like magic and a daemon at his side, and he would be the one driven out at night. He’d be the one who was spat on and cursed and treated like a plague carrier. He cared too much already—He’d nearly run back to have words with the person who threw a rock at Prompto’s temple that afternoon, and that had been normal—and just a few days of that would be enough to make whatever he thought he felt for Prompto turn to something bitter and sour.

“I can’t do that to you,” Prompto breathed, and kissed him.

He didn’t mean to. It’s just that Ignis was so close, and Prompto’s heart was overfull, and the truth that had been pushing its way out through the cracks was too powerful to ignore. He’d never have a life with him, never get to travel with him the way Ignis wanted to, but maybe… maybe he’d have this.

Ignis kissed him back, slowly, guiding Prompto’s unfamiliar lips and tongue with his own. He ran a hand over his face with a feather-light touch, ghosting over the bump of Prompto’s cheekbone, the ridge of his nose, the healing gash at his forehead where the rock had struck.

“You’re beautiful, too,” Ignis whispered, and Prompto’s breath hitched. Ignis leaned back, pulling Prompto with him, until Prompto was lying over his chest with Ignis’ hands carding through his hair.

“I’m sorry,” Prompto said.

“Whatever for?” Ignis’ arms were secure around Prompto’s shoulders. “You should reserve your judgment until you get to the city. The people there… They’ll fall over themselves for a chance at your affections. I will seem a poor choice in comparison.”

“Yeah, no thanks,” Prompto said. Ignis shifted, pulling away, and Prompto fell back onto the couch as he stood. “What… where are…”

“I’ll make us some tea,” Ignis said. “It’s what I always do in emergencies.”

“And this is an emergency?” Prompto asked. Ignis’ smile was wry.

“Allow me a moment of panic, Prompto,” he said, and walked off to fetch the kettle.

Prompto sighed. He’d kissed someone, actually kissed someone, and they wanted to kiss him back. He wondered if maybe Ignis had a point. Maybe if he got dark glasses like Ignis’, visors that latched around his eyes, people wouldn’t care. He could go to Insomnia and work with photographers, right down the street from wherever Ignis worked, and they could have lunch together and meet all those people Ignis kept talking about, just so Prompto could prove that it didn’t matter.

He realized, a little too late, that he was out of kindling for the stove. He slipped silently off of the couch and made his way to the kitchen to warn Ignis before he started searching in the lower cabinets, which were all sealed shut.

Ignis was leaning over the open stove, groping around inside it with one hand. Then he huffed, hunched his shoulders, and pulled his hand back.

He snapped his fingers.

Fire flared in the belly of the stove, orange and steady, with no wood or coal to fuel it. Ignis felt for the warmth, nodded, and closed the hatch.

Prompto felt his blood turn to ice. Of all the truths that had been creeping into the edges of the past few days, this was one he hadn’t expected.

“Ignis,” he said, in a voice that sounded distant to his own ears. Still hunched over the stove, Ignis stiffened, his mouth twisting in a scowl.

“Oh, hell.”


	3. Chapter 3

“You’re a wizard,” Prompto said. “An actual wizard.”

Ignis flinched.

“I thought you said magic was just—you aren’t—“

“Sit down, please,” Ignis said. He put the kettle on over the stove, and waited to hear the creak of Prompto collapsing on the couch before he left the kitchen. When Ignis sat next to him, he sat awkwardly, stiff and tense, his back ramrod straight, fingers clenched in his lap.

“What I said before still stands,” he said. “It isn’t magic, precisely, but it’s hard to explain… You know of the kingsglaive? Men and women who wield magic for the king, sharing his power to defend our borders?”

“Sure,” Prompto said. But only in the loosest sense. They were as real as the moon: No one had ever been close enough to one to see their powers for themselves, but they were aware of their presence through offhand stories passed on from distant cousins and friends near the border. “You aren’t one, are you?”

“Not precisely. But my… powers… come from the same source. I am—was—the advisor to his royal highness Prince Noctis, heir to the Lucian throne.”

Prompto let that sink in. Then, when it didn’t, tried to look at it from a different angle. No matter which way he went about it, it didn’t make sense. If Ignis was a royal advisor, that put him in contact with the best men and women in the country. He was probably used to hanging around with knights, glaives, noblemen and wealthy merchants. He could have anyone he wanted with a job like that.

But he’d kissed _Prompto._

“It’s hardly a source of pride,” Ignis continued, unaware of the slow breakdown of Prompto’s mind as he kept adding two and two and coming up with seventeen. “If I were a stronger man, a man like you... The Council thought that I was becoming too familiar with the prince. Giving allowances for behavior unsuited to his station, allowing him to… He was… He is my closest friend,” Ignis said at last, in a voice that cracked, “and he was in love. The Council gave me an ultimatum. To reveal the name of the ma—the person in question, or to resign from my post. A stronger man would have found another way. But I left. I can’t imagine what they told Noctis.”

Prompto whistled, and Ignis turned his way sharply. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that you keep going on about not being strong enough, but that was pretty brave, not telling them who it was.”

“I couldn’t ruin their lives,” Ignis said. “I can only hope they’ve chosen to use more discretion since then. That’s why I can still use my magic, I suppose. When I swore my services to the prince, I was bound to the magic of his line, and it seems he has yet to sever that.”

“What’ll you do when you get back to Insomnia?” Prompto asked. Ignis laughed, but there wasn’t any real humor in it.

“Gods, I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll get a job as an attendant, like my uncle. If they’ll have me. Or I’ll become a teacher at the university. Prompto.” He grabbed Prompto’s hands, squeezing them tight. “This doesn’t change things between us, does it? Of course it does. I know that your town views magic as a sign of daemonic possession, or a curse—“

“Hey,” Prompto said, squeezing back. “You’re talking to the daemon, right? It was just a shock at first, that’s all. And, I dunno. You’re willing to go into exile for a friend. You’re best friends with the prince. For a guy like you to want me…”

“You should have been born in the city,” Ignis said. His worried frown was starting to shift, wary and unsure. “They would have appreciated you better there.”

Then he kissed Prompto again, fiercer this time, raising his hands to cup his face. “Noctis would love you,” he said, when Prompto was breathless and dreamy-eyed. “I have no doubt. Even Gladio, his shield…” He kissed his jaw, tickling the sensitive skin beneath his ear, and Prompto grinned. “Even the king…”

Prompto sank under the weight of Ignis’ praise even as he sought to kiss him back, and fell against the cushions of the couch. Ignis lay over him, one hand in Prompto’s hair, the other slowly caressing his neck, his broad shoulders, the muscles of his arms. Prompto grabbed the hand in his hair and brought it to his lips, kissing Ignis’ palm. When Ignis laughed this time, he sounded helpless, _happy._

“I could never understand,” he said, tugging at Prompto’s shirt to kiss his exposed collarbone. “Why Noctis could let the love of someone override his reason. I believe I might be starting to, now.”

“R-really?” Prompto gasped at the brush of Ignis’ fingers over his chest.

“Yes, but when you meet him, don’t tell him I said so.” Ignis smiled. “He’ll be insufferable.”

“I’ll remember that,” Prompto said, but he knew better. Ignis would have to leave without him: Even with the king’s magic to sway them, no one would want someone like Prompto anywhere close to the prince. He wondered who it was that the prince had fallen for. How they felt, knowing that Ignis had left on their behalf. Whether they even knew that at all.

Then Ignis was unbuttoning his own shirt, and Prompto found that he was too busy trying to help to think about things like curses, princes, or anything but the feel of Ignis’ body warming the air between them.

They fell asleep at last in Prompto’s bedroom, curled up on his small mattress with Ignis’ head nestled in Prompto’s shoulder and his arm around his waist. Prompto woke several times in the night to find Ignis shifting over him, trapping him in place with a leg or a hand, his light hair spilling over his cheeks. Once, Prompto tried to move and give him space, and Ignis made a soft noise in the back of his throat and grabbed his hand. Prompto stopped, staring down at him, and knew that he would carry the memory of that week for the rest of his life.

He didn’t feel Ignis climb off of him, but when he woke in the morning, Prompto was alone in the bed, curled around a warm dent in the mattress. He rolled off, lazily dragged on his rumpled clothes, and shuffled down the hall.

“You should let me make breakfast this time,” he said, yawning halfway through. His eyes were still hazy from sleep, and it seemed like Ignis was a little taller, broader, where he stood before the stove.

Prompto blinked.

“Oh, Prompto,” Ardyn said, with a smile. “I always let you make breakfast, these days.”

It felt like he’d been doused in cold water. Prompto glanced around, making a quick search of the living room, dining area, and kitchen: No Ignis. But that was fine. That was okay. He was probably outside.

His cart was out front, next to the garden path. Champion was eating his greens, which meant that he’d been fed that morning—and Ardyn wasn’t the type to lower himself to feed chocobos, was he? Prompto swallowed around a lump in his throat and checked the outhouse. Then the water pump. Then the window to his parents’ bedroom, then—

“Cold,” Ardyn said, from where he sat on the backyard fence. Prompto shot him a glare, and ran for the back door. “Colder. _Freezing._ ”

Prompto whipped around. Ardyn was standing directly behind him, hands in his pockets, looking more pleased with himself than he had in years. “Where is he?” Prompto asked.

“Oh, that ruins the fun,” Ardyn said. Prompto lurched into the house, not bothering to wipe off his shoes. “I admit, I was disheartened to find you getting along so well with that traveling wizard. But I thought, ah, of course! _This_ was what was missing all these years. _Love._ It’s the best motivator.”

Prompto ducked down into his kitchen cabinets.

“You won’t find him there,” Ardyn said, and jumped back as Prompto came up swinging, both hands clenched tight around the handle of his cast-iron frying pan. He swung again, and Ardyn materialized on the living room end-table. Prompto lunged for him, and hit the lamp instead, spraying oil and glass all over the floor.

“Is that any way to treat a benefactor?” Ardyn asked, from Prompto’s back. Prompto turned, and he plucked the pan out of his fingers. “Iron works on fairies, my dear. _I_ am a god. And _you,_ ” he said, “will finally have to play along. You have until sunset to find your darling man. If he isn’t in your arms by the time the sun sinks below the horizon, you, my dear Prompto, will be _mine._ ”

Prompto’s tongue felt like it was weighted with lead. Fury rose hot in his throat, twisting in a rumbling growl.

“Goodness,” Ardyn said. “So out of sorts. Why, you’re simply beside yourself.” For a moment, there were two Promptos, both red-faced and scowling, and Ardyn laughed. Prompto tried to punch him in the jaw, and both Ardyn and the second Prompto disappeared.

Prompto stood in the middle of his living room, shoes soaked in oil, glass glittering at his feet, and felt the sharp sting of tears in his eyes.

“Sunset, sweetness,” Ardyn’s voice said, echoing in the empty house. “Don’t forget.”


	4. Chapter 4

The first thing Prompto did was feed the chickens, because there were some things that even a wager with a god didn’t change. Then he cleaned up the mess on the floor just in case, locked up his house, shuttered the windows, and went to his shed for a shovel.

The shovel was old, rusted and cracked with use, and it vibrated in Prompto’s hands when he tested it against the tight weave of the grass in his lawn. That wouldn’t work. Not if he wanted to get Ignis back by sunset. He put the shovel back, pet an anxious Champion on his neck, and strode off down the road. 

There weren’t as many people out in the side streets as they usually were at that time of day: Garden gates hung open, dogs milled about the sidewalks, and the only sign of life were the occasional shutters that banged closed at Prompto’s approach. Every now and then, Prompto caught a glimpse of a group of people running for the main square, so he kept to the back alleys and jumped through narrow gardens on his way to the chocobo post. 

His boss was there, talking to a short, dark-haired man dressed all in black, and a man so tall and wide that Prompto thought, privately, that he could have used him that morning to ward off Ardyn. A glorious array of tattooed feathers trailed down his shoulders and arms in the shape of unfurled wings, and he had a scar that sliced a perfect line over one eye.

“My humblest apologies,” Prompto’s boss was saying, “but we haven’t taken in a bird of that name. Hey! You!” His wheedling voice sharpened as he caught Prompto passing through the yard. “I told you last week, no going into the adolescents’ pens without your eyes covered.”

Prompto felt a small, tightly-wound string in the back of his mind snap, and he turned towards his boss. The dark-haired man jumped, and the larger man placed a hand on his shoulder, whether in warning to Prompto or comfort for the smaller man’s nerves, Prompto couldn’t tell. And for once, he didn’t really care, either. He rounded on his boss, looking him straight in the eyes. Normally, he avoided his gaze, but the night before, Ignis had held him and kissed his eyelids and called him _beautiful,_ and Prompto had walked over the edge to find that he couldn’t go back again. Not to the way it was before.

“You pay me half as much as you pay everyone else,” he said, “and I work just as hard.”

“Hey,” said the dark-haired man. “Maybe we should—“

Prompto walked past him, ignoring the way the larger guy placed himself between Prompto and the other man. “I’ve never complained. Have I ever complained? Did I ever curse you, or make all the chocobos sick, or do anything but _work?_ ”

“There was that year with the behemoth…”

“That wasn’t me!” Prompto had backed him into a stand of greens. His boss’ hands shook, knocking bags onto the dirt, and Prompto closed his eyes for a breath. “But now I’m gonna take a shovel, because you owe me this, and I’m gonna get back the only person who—“ 

He stopped, and stood back. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. He turned away, and stalked towards the shed.

“Look,” his boss cried, “I can give you a raise!”

“I don’t fucking care,” Prompto said. He pushed past the tattooed man, who raised an eyebrow at him curiously, and grabbed a shovel from behind the stables. He tucked it under his arm and walked out of the chocobo post, barely registering the conversation going on behind him. 

“He’s a daemon,” he heard his boss say. “It’s a crying shame, something like that being born to the Argentums, but we look after him in their memory.“

“That’s impossible,” the dark-haired man said, and Prompto paused. “There haven’t been any daemons in Lucis for two hundred years. And besides, they can’t walk around in the sun. They’d die.”

“You should listen to him,” said the larger man, and he glanced at Prompto. “He would know. Hey, kid.”

Shit. Prompto didn’t have time for this. He walked on, towards the center of town. Footsteps pattered up to him, and Prompto tried to move faster, but the man with the tattoos was already on him. “Hey, I called for you.”

“Not a kid,” Prompto said. “And I’m kind of in a rush, okay, big guy?”

The dark-haired man snorted at the other one’s look of outrage. “Wow, Gladio,” he said. “There’s one person who doesn’t fall for the Amicitia intimidation schtick.”

Gladio. Where had Prompto heard that name before? The dark-haired man peered into his eyes.

“So what _did_ happen?” he asked. “If you don’t mind. Were you blessed by Ifrit? Or cursed by Shiva? Doesn't look like an illusion.“

“Maybe I mind,” Prompto said, and Gladio whistled low. “Sorry. I’m—“

“In a rush. I noticed.” The guy didn’t seem that bothered by Prompto’s rudeness. “But maybe you can give us a straight answer. Everyone we’ve talked to has been acting kind of cagey whenever we ask, and keep talking about _bad influences,_ which is honestly freaking me out a little.”

“Noctis,” Gladio said. “Get to the point.”

“Right,” said the dark-haired man, reaching out to steady Prompto as he stumbled and nearly let the shovel slip into the meat of his shoulder. “So we’re looking for someone. Tall, dresses like a professor, light hair, scars on his—“

“Ignis,” Prompto said. He looked from Noctis to Gladio, his heartbeat pulsing like a hammer in his chest. “You’re looking for Ignis. You’re the prince.”

“Uh. Yeah, I guess.” Noct said. “So if you know him, that means he’s still here, right?”

Prompto sighed and started walking again. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? If he’s in trouble…”

Prompto could feel the heat of tears building up in his eyes again. “I don’t know,” he said, in a softer voice. “I’m going to get him back. That’s why I… Why I have the shovel.”

Gladio’s voice sounded like it came from very far away. “Why do you need a shovel to find someone?” he asked. 

The crossroads that had once stood in the very center of town was made of hard-packed earth, and the sun was already high in the sky. Prompto stood in the middle of it and stamped a foot in the dust. 

“I can tell you,” he said, “but it’s gonna be a long story.”

 

It took Prompto two hours to tell them. He went at it backwards, starting from his confrontation with Ardyn that morning. _And then I tried to punch him, but I couldn’t, because he’s a god. I mean, he’s the god who gave me my eyes. And he wants me to work for him since he can’t really leave town, so he stole Ignis—and he stole Ignis because I love him, and I love Ignis because he, because last night, because we—_

Ignis had been right. Gladio and Noctis didn’t scream or spit or curse him, even though Noct’s voice went a little higher when the implications of what Ardyn had done struck him in full. They gently peeled back Prompto’s rambling explanations and pieced together the truth, going all the way back to when Prompto was first aware that it was Ardyn who had cursed him in the first place, to the moment Ardyn gave him his orders.

“Then shouldn’t we be looking for Ignis?” Noct asked, still in a high, panicked voice. “Gods, Gladio, he could be anywhere.”

“No point,” Prompto said. “Ardyn’s never honest about anything. If you do what he says, you’ve already lost. I’m not losing this.”

He was two feet deep in the road, and blisters were starting to form on his hands. Gladio leaned over him and offered to take the shovel. 

“No, I’m fine,” Prompto said. “I know what I’m looking for.”

He had to stop a few times in the end, though, to drink water from Prince Noctis’ flask while Gladio took over digging for a while. Noctis tended to avoid Prompto’s gaze, but he didn’t _seem_ like a prince. Kind of quiet, maybe. A little awkward. 

“Ignis really cares about you,” Prompto told him, during one of his breaks. He’d taken off his shirt and wrapped it around his neck, damp with sweat. “He didn’t want to leave.”

“I know,” Noctis said. “Gladio and I found out why. I’m trying to make it right again. That’s why I’m here. We’ve been following him for _weeks,_ Prompto, and now that we got here, he’s…”

“I’m sorry,” Prompto said. He was too exhausted for tears. “If he hadn’t met me, none of this would’ve happened.”

“Not your fault,” Noct told him. “Blame Ardyn.”

Still, Prompto felt the misery sinking into his bones as he took the shovel again. People were starting to gather around the crossroads, watching him dig, whispering to themselves as the pile of dirt at the edge of the hole rose and slipped over the street. By the time the sun was a melting gold disc against the trees, most of the town was there, hundreds of eyes trained on Prompto. 

At last, Prompto felt the shovel strike something brittle and hard. He set the shovel aside and dug with his hands, unearthing the scattered, aged bones of a skeleton. His mouth was so dry that when he licked his lips, he could taste blood, and when he lifted out the skull from its bed in the middle of the crossroads, his stomach lurched. 

“Ardyn,” he said. He climbed out of the hole, still holding the skull in one hand. The crowd around him let out a collective cry of shock. “Ardyn! You have my man, but I have your bones!”

A wind picked up at Prompto’s feet. He braced himself as it pushed him towards the edge of the hole, inch by inch. Grit flew in his eyes and mouth, and he ducked his head, holding the skull close as his heels skidded out into open air. He fell back, and the skull slipped from his grasp and clattered into the pit. The wind wrapped around his neck. The pressure built until Prompto could feel the pads of fingers holding him up over the hole in the earth. The hand was followed by an arm, and a shoulder, then the folds of a ruffled shirt and a jacket Prompto knew since birth, and at last a face, twisted into an inhuman rictus of rage. 

“And now,” Ardyn said, “I have _you._ ”


	5. Chapter 5

Prompto’s feet dangled over the maw of the pit where his town’s patron god was buried, shoes kicking uselessly at the dirt in an attempt to take the pressure off the hand at his throat.

“I liked you, Prompto,” Ardyn said. Behind him, the swirling wind that had knocked Prompto over the edge blocked the prince and Gladio from trudging through, and kicked up a high wall of sand between them and the horrified crowd. “So I figured, oh, a little defiance is allowed. But this? Standing at the source of my power, defiling it with your irreverent hands?” 

He released Prompto on the hard earth next to the pit, and Prompto’s legs buckled. He fell, coughing in lungfuls of dirt and humid air, and Ardyn crouched on his ankles before him. A large hand brushed his bangs out of his eyes.

“Sun’s almost set, my dear,” he said.

“I never agreed,” Prompto gasped. His throat felt raw. “Never said… yes. To your wager.”

Ardyn’s eyebrows shot up. “You would prefer your lover dead?” he asked. Prompto shook his head, and his fingernails scraped on the road. 

“I wanna make a deal,” he said. Ardyn’s hand was still in his hair, tucking errant strands behind his ear. He thought of Ignis, idly playing with his hair the night before, and suppressed a shudder. “Bring him back—alive—and I’ll do it.”

Ardyn waited, fingers halted where they half lifted Prompto’s chin. His eyes burned with the dust that flew up from the road, but the two of them were in a pocket of relative calm, surrounded by winds that funneled up like a cyclone rooted in place. 

“I’ll be your man,” Prompto said. “I’ll go where you want me to, do what you want… I’ll even get those fucking apples. Just. Bring him back.”

The silence between them stretched dangerously long, giving Prompto enough time to see the open-mouthed faces of the crowd beyond. There was no going back from this, anyways. Prompto had one chance, only one chance left, and he buried it behind the pain in his throat and the blisters on his hands, a last simmering thought shoved down where Ardyn couldn’t see.

“Very well,” Ardyn said, and leaned down to kiss Prompto on the forehead. He felt something shift within him, a pulse flowing outward from where Ardyn’s lips touched his skin, and knew the bargain was already taking hold. He had minutes. Seconds.

“I want to say goodbye,” he said. “Hold up your end first.”

“Such a trusting start to a partnership,” Ardyn murmured, and waved a hand. Ignis fell from the empty air before him, staggering on wobbly legs. His face was ashen, his hair unkempt, but otherwise he looked unharmed. He dropped to his knees before Prompto, and Prompto held onto his shoulders to steady him.

“Ignis,” he said. 

“Good gods.” Ignis’ voice was a rasp. “Prompto, you’ve been… you’re in terrible danger.” His hands traveled up to Prompto’s face, as though he couldn’t trust his ears. “There’s a _god_ here.”

“Yeah, I know,” Prompto said. He grabbed one of Ignis’ hands and pushed it down to the earth at his side, letting his fingers feel the sharp edge of the pit. “We don’t have time. I had to make a bargain to get you back. I’m… I’m his, now.”

“ _Prompto!_ ”

Prompto kissed Ignis, putting in it all the yearning, all the joy and fear and hunger of the last week, all the while still pressing Ignis’ hand on the lip of the pit. “I’m sorry,” he said, then whispered in Ignis’ ear, so faint that it looked more like the brush of a kiss. “I dug up his bones.”

“You—“

“That’s long enough,” Ardyn said, rising to his feet.

“ _Ignis,_ ” Prompto hissed, as Ardyn’s hands gripped him under the arms. “I might…” He kissed him on the cheek, feverish and desperate. “Need a little… _mag—_ ”

Ignis cried out when Prompto was dragged away, yanked to his feet by Ardyn’s sure hold. Prompto was lifted upright, and he looked up at Ardyn as though from outside of his body, witnessing the tense, tight line of his own shoulders. Ardyn smiled warmly and pulled him into a tight embrace.

“Oh, Prompto,” he crooned. “You will be _magnificent_ one day. But first, we will have to teach you how to behave. Self-sacrifice is for mortal men. When this pact is done, you will be _mine._ Interesting. Clever. _Just_ a little ruthless.”

Prompto turned in his hold, and saw Ignis crouching over the pit, hand outstretched in a familiar gesture. 

“I already am,” he said. He touched Ardyn’s cheek, rubbing a thumb over the stubble at his jaw. “I’m sorry, Ardyn. I wish I could say that I liked you.”

Ignis snapped his fingers.

Ardyn _howled._ Fire flared up out of the pit, hissing and crackling, and the god who held Prompto dissolved in a shriek that rang in his ears. The wind picked up, punching Prompto back as he staggered to Ignis, and he’d only gone a few steps before he heard a rattle and clack from the pit. Ignis reeled, shuffling away at the sound, and Prompto lunged for him as the burning, charred wreckage of the god’s skeleton started to claw its way out of the pit. Its fingers snapped as it tried to pull its way up, giving Prompto just enough time to barrel into Ignis before the fire that engulfed it came too close.

It swiveled its cracking skull towards Prompto, and in the hollows of its empty eyes Prompto only saw a cold and incalculable determination. It was the drive that had made Ardyn a god in the first place: He’d been just a man before, buried beneath the street so that his bones could be trodden on in disgrace, but pure spite had given him a new life. This, Prompto realized, was the heart of a god. Wretched and broken and relentless, sheathed in magic. 

“Gonna need a little more fire,” Prompto croaked. Ignis wrapped an arm around Prompto, pulling him flush to his chest. Then he extended a hand outward, towards the sound of bones scraping against the road, and fire bloomed from his fingers. It swallowed the bones of the god known as Ardyn, roaring louder than the skeletons rattle, and made Prompto’s skin go tight and hot. Then it was gone, and the bones were nothing but ash and scattered chips and shards. The wind that had roared around them died to a trickle that teased the heap of ash, swirling through it like a child writing in the dirt. 

“Is it gone?” Ignis asked, in the stark silence of the crossroads. Prompto twisted in his arms. The sun was still setting, reflecting an orange light off Ignis’ glasses, and Prompto’s face was a shadow against the sky. It was _too_ dark, Prompto knew, but he couldn’t put his finger on why. He tilted his head, watching his reflection shift in Ignis’ lenses, and light crossed over his cheeks. 

Prompto grabbed Ignis’ hand. 

In Ignis’ glasses, the man that looked back at him was haggard, the skin under his eyes puffy and aggravated from the dust that coated his skin. His hair was a wreck, his lips quirked in something that could only be loosely called a smile, and his eyes…

“Yeah,” he said, and hugged Ignis so tight that the man wheezed. “Yeah, it’s gone.”

Around them, the people of Prompto’s hometown stood at a respectful distance, a line of silhouettes amid the darkness of the houses that lined the road. Noctis and Gladio approached slowly, faces twisted in bewilderment, and as Prompto held his man tight next to the grave of the god that had cursed him, the only light that shone came from the dim glow of the setting sun.

 

\---

 

“And the daemon wailed, and its eyes did pale, and the god cast off his skin, and the daemon man of North Duscae was never seen again.”

“This can’t be healthy,” Ignis said. He joined Prompto on the edge of a fountain in Insomnia’s western gardens, adjusting his Council robes so that his complicated sleeves didn’t dangle in the water. His cane was new, as were his blue-grey glasses and sleekly polished shoes, and next to Prompto’s patched and studded vest and jeans he still refused to throw away, he looked more out of place than a raven in a flock of parrots. The imposing figure he made was ruined somewhat when Prompto held a half-eaten cherry pastry to his lips, and he dutifully took a bite, smiling faintly.

“It’s kind of flattering,” Prompto said. “I mean, how many people do you know who have songs made after them?” A few yards away, the folksinger adjusted his guitar and broke into an upbeat song about whales. The children sitting in front of him, who were starting to drift off at the end of the song about the god and the daemon, jumped to their feet and clapped along.

“Only you would take that drivel as a compliment,” Ignis said, and wrapped an arm around Prompto’s waist. “How were your classes?”

Prompto shrugged, leaning into Ignis’ hold. “One of the professors is trying to figure out how to develop pictures in color. It’s pretty bad so far, but he has red and blue down. How’s advising going? Did you get Noct to wake up before noon this time?”

“Gods, don’t start.” Ignis held his fingers over Prompto’s mouth, feeling the smile that tugged at his cheeks. “I think he used up all his initiative to track me down.” He stood, and gave Prompto a little bow, holding out his free hand. “Now, if the daemon man of North Duscae is amenable, we have just enough time to make it to the theatre before the doors close.”

Prompto brushed crumbs off his pants and placed his hand in Ignis’. “This isn’t going to be one of those plays that’s actually a metaphor for like, politics or something?” he asked. 

“Perish the thought,” Ignis said. “It’s pure romantic garbage.” He bent to kiss Prompto’s knuckles, and Prompto laughed. “Honestly, love. Have a little faith.”

“In _you?_ ” Prompto stood, and turned their hands around to brush his lips against Ignis’ fingers. “Well, I guess it’s worth a shot.”


End file.
